I really didn’t mean to rile up the MAGA loving or the placebo-denying crowd by pointing out that no one can rank cable audio quality by price (or to promote communism). I’m just pointing out the obvious-- very expensive cables include obscene profit margins and that beyond a certain build and materials quality yield little interchangeable differences that cannot be ranked by price.
You might wonder what kind of system I have-- I use a SOTA Series VI (w/vacuum & mag-lev bearing) with Origin Live Silver mkIII arm, Soundsmith Hyperion cartridge, Musical Fidelity VINYL phone-pre, McCormack DNA Gold amp and preamp, Genesis III speakers+ Genesis Servo-12 subs, Morrow cables (3 series) - for the analog chain, + dedicated power circuits, all copper wiring/grounding.
I can easily hear the differences between my phono cartridges’, between my different phono preamps, changes in speaker positioning, room treatments, vibrations treatments, etc., and yeah, I have tried multiple cables from decent to very expensive, living with them for a while before coming to any conclusions. With cables it’s just trading one set of micro-differences for another with NO relationship between price and ultimate sonic quality-- and frankly, I’d rather listen to music than the gear, which I think is, for some, a kind of obsessive distraction.
Anyway-- I’d bet anyone here that they would never be able to rank a series of cables by audio quality -- say five cables ranging from $200 - $10,000 each.
It’s all in your mind-- so if you want to believe that a $2000 piece of wire will beat a $200 piece of wire, then by all means, go for it! What was it again that P.T. Barnum said? Hope that doesn’t make me a commie!
